


The Promenade of Improbabilities

by KellerProcess



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Ainley!Master, Cheetah!Master - Freeform, Depression, F/F, M/M, Multi, Victorian freak shows, Victorian wunderkammer, pre-The Snowmen, situational depression
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 19:27:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/930210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KellerProcess/pseuds/KellerProcess





	The Promenade of Improbabilities

Heavy.

The Doctor had no better word for the feeling that wrapped around him like a lead blanket. It was a maudlin image, cliché and far beneath a man of his genius. But that didn’t change the fact that the mere act of shuffling to the kitchen for a cup of tea–or the mere act of even raising his hand–made his bones ache and his muscles knot, made him want to climb into bed and sleep for days, despite the fact that Time Lords needed only a few hours of rest each week.

The mere act of thinking was worse.

Thankfully, though, the Doctor had a way around that–heavy feeling or not, he was still a genius after all. So he didn’t do a lot of thinking these days. Instead, he got angry, and that at least made the weight in his body and the pain twining his hearts like serpents go away. He smashed entire rooms filled with souvenirs and other fine, destroyable things that made satisfying noises when he threw them against walls–Ming Dynasty tableware quickly became a favorite. He tore apart projects and curiosities in his many laboratories, admiring how the wires sparked and how the tendrils of copper burned his hands and wrists. He took a hammer to every mirror he could find; after all, seven years of bad luck for each swing had nothing on twelve hundred years of it.

And there was Strax. It was always good to scream at Strax. Strax just stood there and took it like the good little meatheaded soldier he was built to be. And that infuriated the Doctor, which in turn made him scream more until his vocal cords ground together and he choked on their dryness.

But anger and red giants had one thing in common: eventually they burned themselves out. Eventually, all that remained was a tired, bitter and very, very cold feeling that settled in him like a third, engorged heart.

Cold. Dark.

Heavy.

The Doctor could really sympathize with black dwarf stars.

And hermits.

No, not the rubbish ones he joked about during happier times. Real hermits. The ones who merely wanted to sit in their caves and pray or meditate or paint portraits or whatever it was that hermits did without being interrupted by supplicants or disciples or whoever it was that interrupted hermits to ask for their advice or their blessing or their imprimatur.

Or, in this case, Madam Vastra and Jenny Flint, the former looking entirely too gentle and the latter entirely too pleased with herself to be in any way

Sighing, the Doctor looked at them, and then looked back down at the pot of tea Strax had brewed for him–or attempted to brew and probably burned, considering this was Strax, after all.

“Go away,” he said. “I’m busy.” He forced down a gulp of tea to prove it. Yes, Strax had definitely mucked it up, as usual.

Oh, yes. He could sympathize with hermits quite nicely.

Jenny rolled her eyes toward her wife. “Busy sulking’s more like it,” she muttered. Entirely so he could hear it, the Doctor was sure.

“Look,” he said archly, setting the cup aside and straightening the collar of his dressing gown, “are you two here for an actual reason, or do you really have nothing better to do?”

Vastra clicked her tongue disapprovingly and half closed her eyes. “I assure you, Doctor, I enjoy visiting when you would rather be left alone slightly less than Strax enjoys brewing tea.” She tilted her head sharply toward the still-smoking pot.

“Thank you, madam.” As always, Strax grinned back at her as though she had just paid him a compliment.

The Doctor ignored him. “So, then you’re here because…?”

“We wanted you to come to the theatre with us.”

Jenny really couldn’t dissemble if she wanted to, the Doctor thought. He supposed his third or fourth self would have really appreciated that. “No thank you,” he said, standing up.

“But it’s Mr. Wilde’s latest!”

“Yes, well, listening to three hours of his self-important twaddle at one of his parties was quite enough, thank you. Why would I want to hear it all again only this time underscored by more insipid laughter?”

“I told you, my dear,” Vastra said with a sidelong glance at her wife.

Jenny frowned, but in a moment, her moue turned into a sympathetic look that made the Doctor feel both angry and vaguely guilty. “Doctor,” she started. “We’re just worried, that’s all.”

“Hmph,” Vastra snorted. But she wasn’t looking at him.

The Doctor blinked, and the vaguely guilty overrode his attempt to turn on his heels and leave them standing in his console room until they had the good sense to leave.

Apparently taking the fact he was still standing there as a good omen, Jenny went on. “Sitting alone in here, all by yourself, with your console room looking just as it did when they… well, it’s not good for you.”

The Doctor looked at her long and hard, but of course Jenny didn’t fidget or look away. Frowning deeply, just to show her how very not on this all was, he plopped back down into his easy chair.

Jenny folded her arms across her narrow chest. “I know I shouldn’t scold. We just don’t like the thought of you locking yourself away like this. It’s– I mean, it’s one thing if you don’t want to run about the universe anymore, but that’s not just what you’re doing now, is it? Isn’t that right, Strax?”

“Isolation is not good for warriors, madam. I read that in one of the Doctor’s books.”

The Doctor’s eyes widened as he turned in his seat. “Just a minute. Since when can you read?”

Strax shrugged helpfully. “It had pictures of warriors wrestling and embracing in most exciting ways, though none of them wore proper battle attire and–”

“Yes, yes. All right. Thank you for that image, Strax.” The Doctor closed his eyes and pinched the skin between his eyebrows as if attempting to ward off a migraine. They were, after all, just trying to help, he thought. In their own inept way.

“Lady Windemere’s Fan,” he muttered as he stood again. “Well, I suppose nothing can be worse than Salome. Oh, stop it,” he added when all three of them smiled–including Vastra, who should have had far more sense than that. “This is making you feel better. Not me. Are we clear on that?”

“All right, Doctor.” Jenny looked somewhat chastened, and for a moment the Doctor regretted his words. But then, he thought, it was her own fault for not leaving him alone after he’d asked repeatedly in both dulcet and much less than dulcet tones.

“Right. I’ll just get dressed, then.” The Doctor turned and strode up the nearest spiraling staircase without another word. Not even when Jenny sighed and told her wife, “I suppose it’s better than nothing, isn’t it?”

***

The street before the collonaded Saint James Theatre was crowded with hansom cabs and pedestrians–no surprise there for opening night of a comedy by England’s most notorious windbag. Then again, the Doctor thought as Strax hopped from the hackney’s seat and opened the door for them, in about three years said windbag would be convicted of gross indecency and sent to gaol, so he supposed he should be more charitable.

“Ohh, isn’t it lovely?” Jenny cooed as she wrapped her free arm through his and looked at Vastra.

Behind her black lace veil, her wife chuckled. “Don’t I take you to the theatre often enough, my darling? We can go more regularly, if you wish.”

“Oh, oh no!” Jenny insisted. “It’s just… I never saw a proper play before we met, dearest. Just music hall, mostly. Sometimes I still can’t quite get used to the difference. That’s all. Not that I don’t still enjoy a good farce or burlesque.” She grinned at Vastra.

For his part, the Doctor tried not to scowl. All of this clingy-snuggly business just made him think of the very thing he had come here expressly not to think about for a while. “Look,” he cut in as Jenny hugged her spouse’s arm, giggling, “I don’t want to break this up, exactly, but…” The lights flickered and a polite chime sounded, completing his thought for him.

“Hm?” Jenny looked at him as if she had just suddenly remembered that someone was actually holding on to her left arm. “Oh. Yes, of course. Sorry. Vastra? Doctor? Shall we?”  
The Doctor shrugged and let the woman lead him along.

The theatre was packed with well-dressed patrons and noisy with excitement and gossip. All of them no doubt were trying to see as well as be seen as much as possible before the house lights dimmed and the curtain rose. Most likely, the lot of them would simply stare at each other through opera glasses even in the near darkness, the Doctor thought viciously as he took his seat beside Jenny in the box.

“Here’s hoping this won’t be as dull as his jokes,” the Doctor said as the lights lowered.

“Shh.” Jenny jabbed him in the ribs playfully.

***

The Doctor tried. He really, really did, he told himself. And for a little while, it had worked. The first act was more or less engaging; he had chuckled a few times and even laughed out loud twice, much to Jenny’s approval. But by first intermission, the Doctor’s thin sheen of mirth had evaporated. His limbs were beginning to feel twice their weight again, and his joints felt like iron. Worse, the press of glittery humans and their endless, endless chatter seemed to have planet the seed of a migraine between his eyes; the Doctor was sure it would blossom into a perfect spiderweed of pain.

“Doctor?” Jenny asked, her hand gentle on his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

Too close, too hot, too bright. The color of their gowns, the crispness of their suits. It made him remember. Balls. Masquerades. Bright, happy things that made them smile.

And just like that, it felt as though someone had plucked one of his hearts from its aorta as if it were a diseased piece of fruit.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled as he slipped from Jenny’s touch. “I just… I can’t.”

Disappointment flashed across Jenny’s face only for a moment before Vastra stepped in next to them. “Yes, of course. We completely understand,” the Silurian said. “If you’d like to take the hackney back–”

“No, that’s fine.” The Doctor shook his head. “It’s a lovely evening. I’ll just… yes. Yes, well…”

The Doctor shrugged and shook his hand before him as if he were attempting to bounce the air. But there was nothing more to say, really, and a “goodnight” seemed both wrong and insufficient. So he shrugged again, turned, and made his way through the bodies that continued laughing and talking as if the world were a bright thing that could never possibly end.

He couldn’t help but hate them all.

***

Strax, ever trying to emulate civilized behavior, trailed the Doctor in the carriage for a block before returning to the theatre under orders to wait for his employers. As a blast of February wind threatened to knock the hat from his head, the Doctor briefly considered changing those orders, then remembered that trying to hold a conversation with Strax on the way back to the TARDIS would be slightly more painful than getting punched in the stomach. Shivering just slightly, he tugged his coat closer about him and continued back to the isolated mews where his TARDIS waited on her illusory cloud. He was already feeling tired, as if sleep had attached two long, thick strings to his body, one to tug him along slowly and one to pull his eyelids down. A nice warm bath, the Doctor decided, with Venusian salts, and then a cup of chamomile tea specifically not brewed by a Sontaran. And then sleep. Days of it. Until his body forced him to wake up, and even then there were ways to get around what one’s body wanted.

Yes, that sounded very nice, indeed.

The mews was deserted when he finally arrived, feeling a bit numb from the cold wind and the weight in his body. Thanks to the psychic field he’d erected thirty years ago, only residents and people with the most pressing business ever made use of this little corridor, regularly leaving it deserted. Tonight was no exception. Apparently, everyone was out enjoying Wilde’s latest or dining or… doing whatever people did when they felt like doing things. The Doctor sighed, positioned himself near the tree that served as a marker, and leaped into the air, feeling as though the motion would break his suddenly Brobdingnagian mass against the pavement.  
Thankfully, he snagged the ladder’s lowest rung on the second attempt and hauled it down to a reasonable height.

Something slapped against his calf. A piece of errant paper or something. Frowning, the Doctor shook his leg to dislodge it. Honestly, it was 1892, he thought viciously. He understood that humans would always be ass-backwards in everything, but couldn’t they just learn about public sanitation or something? As loath as he was now to interfere in anything they decided to do or anything anyone wanted to do to them, he briefly entertained the idea of introducing twenty-fifth century street-cleaning techniques six hundred years early just to avoid the puddles of filth and the random litter– And really, hadn’t the damned paper dislodged itself yet?

Sighing in frustration, the Doctor leaned down and snatched the bill from his right leg, around which it had thoroughly wrapped itself thanks to the guttering wind. He was just about to toss it away in frustration when the picture on it caught his eye.

“What?” he whispered as what felt like several million icicles stabbed through his veins.

The paper was a flier for the Promenade of Improbabilities, a sideshow and wunderkammer apparently located in Whitechapel, whose proprietor was one M. Barnabas Chance. What it was doing so far away from the district was not the Doctor’s concern, however, as much as what attraction it advertised.

“The Wild-Man of Xanadu,” the Doctor read. “As introduced of late before Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. Two engagements daily, afternoons 1 to 3, evenings 6 to 8.”

He read it again, and again, and then stared at the picture for several moments. “Impossible,” he whispered at last.

But the wild-man’s picture insisted otherwise. Although the illustration showed him only from the chest up, he had the same slender figure, the same dark hair, the same yellow-gold eyes. Only now, a line of spots vanished into his dark hair and down into his beard, both of which were far more disheveled than he last remembered. His grin revealed two unusually long bicuspids and two rows of teeth that looked far more cheetah-like than Trakenite.

“Impossible,” the Doctor said again. He scanned up and down the mews. It was every bit as empty and silent as when he arrived. The Doctor looked at the bill again. How had it traveled so far from Whitechapel? Had some nice person in this nice neighborhood been “slumming” as they so nicely called it? Or had someone deliberately meant for him to find it?

The Doctor did not feel either like investigating or preparing himself for a violent confrontation at the moment. He scaled the ladder as quickly as he could and then drew it up behind him. As he paced up the spiral staircase leading to his TARDIS, he examined the bill closely.

“That man is dead,” he said at last. “Or… that version of him, anyway.”

And yet, he thought as he continued to climb, could he really be sure? The last time he had seen him, they had been locked in an intense battle on the Cheetah Planet, and the Doctor had been paying far more attention to not getting his skull crushed in with the head of a femur than the man swinging it like a club. After that, no hide nor hair of him–literally and figuratively–until the culmination of the Act of Master Restitution on Skaro near the end of his seventh regeneration’s life.

How had he looked then? The Doctor paused in climbing to think, ignoring the bitter blast of cold that whipped his scarf around his nose. Granted, he hadn’t been there, not feeling quite in the mood to watch the Daleks destroy a former friend in person, but the Time Lords in their infinite wisdom and mercy and sent him some footage with his instructions.

It had been difficult to see, given how far away they had positioned the recording equipment but…now that the Doctor thought of it…hadn’t the man on trial been a bit taller? His hair black rather than chestnut? His eyes brown, not blue or even yellow.

The Doctor ran a hand through his hair and cursed, barely even noticing that his top hat had gone missing.

He didn’t know. He just didn’t know.

And of course, in a flight of particular brilliance, he had deleted the footage immediately after viewing it and followed up the act with a rare stiff drink, because God knew he wanted to forget it.

Just remembering the entire fiasco made him angry at the Time Lords all over again.

And yet…

Could he have found another body to occupy before the trial?

Could the Doctor just now have stumbled upon a part of a time line into which his seventh self and all the regenerations after had never crossed?

And if so, what the hell was the man doing in a freak show?

The Doctor glanced back down at the bill and ran his fingertip over the curve of the Master’s lips–or the man he simultaneously hoped and feared was the Master.

“Could it be you?” he asked the picture.

The yellow-gold eyes gazed back at him, providing no definite answer.


End file.
